


Witching Hour

by baridalive



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Body Swap AU, Curses, Denial of Feelings, Domestic Fluff, Falling In Love, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Potions Accident, Self-Discovery, Strangers to Lovers, mildly slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28289613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baridalive/pseuds/baridalive
Summary: Having an out of body experience used to just be an expression.Or:One potions accident later, roommates of convenience Donghyuck and Mark switch bodies and suffer the consequence of self-discovery.
Relationships: Kim Jungwoo/Lee Taeyong if you squint, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 34
Kudos: 519
Collections: Favorites, the misfits' holiday exchange





	Witching Hour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mythological](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythological/gifts).



> i wrote this whole fic in like two days and i don't think i slept but HEY IT'S HERE!!!!  
> (other considered titles: centripetal force, (out of sight) out of mind, prelude to a kiss, water under the bridge)
> 
> to mina: this goes out to you because of all the times i ranted about the misfit exchange on my priv and you offered to help but i couldn’t tell you that you COULDN’T HELP BC I HAD YOU AS MY PROMPTER FOR IT  
> anyway... i actually had a BLAST writing this bc i got to do lots of fun worldbuilding that you so kindly left open, so i hope it lives up to all of your magical uni shennanigan dreams :) love you lots!!
> 
> happy holidays!

Having an out of body experience used to just be an expression.

Donghyuck's first one of the day was seeing Mark in the kitchen. _Voluntarily._ He has to pause in the doorway of the apartment and rub his eyes to make sure he’s seeing things correctly.

Mark is standing on a rickety old step stool—Donghyuck doesn't even know where he got it from because he’s never seen it in the apartment before—hunched over a comically large cauldron that's precariously balanced on their electric stovetop, cursing rather loudly about how finicky Rotheldran ashes are to deal with.

It would honestly be a lot funnier if Donghyuck wasn't so damn tired, drained both physically and mentally from having to survive back-to-back training sessions today. Professor Qian’s sessions are always immensely difficult, and then having that followed up by sparring with Jungwoo makes Fridays the most tiring day of the week, regardless of how fun they can be. Besides even that, the whole week has been grueling; none of his professors have been willing to give students a break so close to the blood moon.

Donghyuck isn't even sure he could produce a spark from his pinky if someone asked right now, let alone perform the upcoming blood moon ceremonies.

"What the hell are you doing?" Donghyuck grumbles as he closes the door behind him, tossing his keys in the bowl on the countertop.

Mark nearly falls over at the sound, clearly not having heard the door open just moments ago. The stool creaks in protest as Mark flails before catching himself on the edge of the counter and regaining his balance. He looks over, panicked, before realizing who spoke.

"Oh, Donghyuck," he greets nervously, wiping his hands on his jeans. Some unidentifiable residue smears there; it probably won't ever wash out. Donghyuck really doesn't care enough to say anything right now. "You're home."

"Astute observation," he replies dryly, adjusting his backpack on his shoulders. Spellbooks get heavier throughout the day, he'd swear his entire Fedrican Flame collection on it.

"You're home early," Mark amends, shooting him a shaky smile as his ears turn red. "I just wanted to be done when you got here. This is kind of embarrassing."

Donghyuck hums, somewhere between contemplative and understanding. "What are you even doing? Shouldn't you be in training right now anyway?"

"Yeah, about that..." Mark moves to scratch the back of his head before realizing he has something on his hands and pauses halfway through his movement to examine his fingertips. “Training was dismissed so I’m doing some extra credit work for Professor Moon at the moment. It’s prep for the blood moon ceremonies next weekend.”

Donghyuck’s brain only absorbs about half of those words, so he just hums and nods. “Have fun. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

“Mhmm,” Mark hums, already turning back to the potion to delicately sprinkle some iridescent powder in, immediately making the whole room smell like petrichor and mint. Donghyuck just stands there for a moment, watching Mark work as he carefully measures out and weighs each ingredient before stirring it in very precisely.

They don’t tend to talk a lot, if at all, so it’s easy for Donghyuck to forget just how good Mark is at what he does. It’s a little intimidating, especially for someone like Donghyuck who can’t make sense of a potion recipe for the life of him.

“Mark?” Donghyuck asks, and Mark _jumps._

“Fuck, _shit!”_ Mark cries as he loses his balance on the stool and knocks into the cauldron on his way down. Donghyuck is halfway around the kitchen counter before he can even _think,_ to try do Merlin-knows-what to help the situation, but all that ends up happening is Donghyuck slipping in the silvery potion that’s spilled all across the ground and he collides with Mark on the floor, head-first.

Mark looks at him, dazed. “At least the heat was off,” he says slowly, then immediately collapses, eyes rolling back and head hitting the ground with a concerning amount of force.

Normally, Donghyuck would’ve tried to stop that from happening, but he can’t control his limbs. A fiery sort of pain licks through his body, and then he passes out.

⇄

This is where Donghyuck’s second out of body experience of the day comes into play, and it’s significantly less pleasant than the first, which is saying something. 

It takes an irritatingly long amount of time for Mark to wake up, but at least it gives time for Donghyuck to come to terms with exactly what the hell just happened. Seeing the comical surprise on the face that Mark’s soul sits behind when he sits up blearily and finds himself face to face—quite literally—with the features it’s so used to hiding behind makes it worth it though.

“You…” Mark struggles, at a loss for words. “Did we…”

“Yes, Mark,” Donghyuck grumbles, looking down at his own hands. He doesn’t recognize them. “We switched bodies.”

Mark promptly passes out again. 

⇄

"In my defense," Mark starts timidly, voice echoing off the bathroom walls, "I was doing fine until you got home."

"Mark," Donghyuck grumbles, feeling the residual stickiness of the potion drip down the line of his spine uncomfortably, "if you don't stop speaking, I will personally feed you to the dragons under the football field."

Mark looks like he wants to retort, but sees his own eyes narrowed back at him in the mirror and seals his mouth into a thin line begrudgingly. Donghyuck looks back to his own reflection, scrubbing a hand over the familiar features, but they feel so foreign under his palms.

"If we ever fix this, I'm going to murder you."

Mark just smiles at him sheepishly, but when Donghyuck looks over, all he sees is his own face smiling back at him.

He might just feed Mark to the dragons anyway.

⇄

"Taeyong," Mark pleads, "you've gotta help. C'mon, you said I could come to you for anything."

Taeyong does a double take at that before squinting between the two of them, leaning forward until his nose almost brushes Mark's. It would be a lot weirder if Donghyuck didn't know that Taeyong's clairvoyance was probably just going off the charts at the moment, and the eyes, truly, are the windows to the soul that Taeyong loves to uncomfortably exploit.

"Do you two want to tell me what happened or am I going to have to guess?" he asks finally, leaning back onto his heels, crossing his arms. Mark opens his mouth to reply, but Donghyuck beats him to it.

"I'm Donghyuck. That's Mark." He points to them both in turn, watching in no minimal amount of satisfaction as Taeyong's jaw drops. "We switched bodies and now we need to switch back."

 _"They switched fucking what?"_ a voice shouts from inside the room, and Taeyong winces at the same time Donghyuck does. He's a touch too familiar with that voice.

"Nothing, Woo, don't worry about it—" Taeyong calls back, trying to step out into the hall and close the door behind him, but Jungwoo throws it wide open, robes billowing around him. He has chalk on his hands and ash all the way up to his elbows. He must've been in the middle of an incantation, which would explain Taeyong's hesitance to open up the door.

"Mark Lee what the hell did you do to my prodigy?" Jungwoo points a dirtied, accusing finger at Mark's—Donghyuck's?—terrified face.

"I—I didn't mean to or anything!" Mark defends himself, frantic. Donghyuck watches him; it's weird to see such abject fear on his own face. He didn't even know his face could contort like that. "It was an honest accident!"

Jungwoo huffs, taking Mark's chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting it side to side, examining the features that always used to have Donghyuck's soul lurking behind them. "You are lucky you came to the right person. C'mon, come in. I should be able to fix this."

He lets Mark's chin go with a flourish, a smudge of ash left on the skin there. Donghyuck has a weird urge to wipe it off, but he chalks it up to just wanting to make sure he doesn't break out because of it. Magic substances, contrary to what one may think, really don't mix well with skincare.

Taeyong, looking lost and a little scared, beckons the two of them in from the hallway. He glances right and left before shutting the door behind them. Donghyuck wonders what's making him so paranoid. By the time Donghyuck makes it into the kitchen, Jungwoo is ordering Mark to take off his shirt and lay down on the kitchen counter. Mark obeys without hesitation. It's weird to see himself like this, Donghyuck decides; it's weird to feel self conscious about something that's not the body he's inhabiting.

"It theoretically shouldn't be too hard to extract souls temporarily, but it's the issue of getting them to get back into a new host that's the problem. I don't know how you two managed it the first time—wait, how _did_ you manage to do it?"

"Summoning potion gone wrong," Mark grumbles, clenching his hands into fists. He's angry with himself, that much is clear, and it's not hard to figure out why. He's supposed to be the best at potions, and now when he messes up, he messes up so badly that he switches bodies with someone and all anyone has done about it so far is get upset with him. Maybe Donghyuck feels a little twinge of guilt at that, but pushes it down in favor of focusing on how to fix this. Mark can deal with his own conscience later when he's back in his own body. "I got distracted. Messed it up."

Donghyuck raises his eyebrows at Mark not throwing him under the bus for this, but he can almost hear Renjun's tiny irritating voice in his head going, _"Mark Lee is one of the kindest people I've ever met, you're just an asshole."_

Donghyuck mentally flips off Renjun.

"You messed it up so badly that you _switched bodies?"_ Jungwoo pauses in where he's drawing a sigil on his forearm in what's surely cursed ash to give Mark an astonished glance. Mark looks like he wants to curl in on himself and die, and under a gaze like that, Donghyuck can't blame him. Thankfully, Taeyong comes to his rescue.

"Jungwoo, be nice," he scolds. "You are in no place to judge Mark."

"But—"

"I dragged your ass through Potionmaking Basics your freshman year, don't even try me. Mark is leagues above where you were at the time, and even are now." Taeyong starts taking out candles from the cabinet above the refrigerator as he speaks. "All things considered, the bases of the potions are nearly identical and there aren't that many differences between them fundamentally. All it would take is a little inattention and you could end up with one or the other. It's not like you didn't mix up—"

Jungwoo's ears burn bright red. Before Taeyong has even finished saying anything. "Okay, that's enough."

Mark laughs a little, looking significantly more relaxed now. The hunch he'd carried in his shoulders ever since he'd come to in Donghyuck's body finally softens out a bit.

"Wait, what is this?" Donghyuck protests. "You can't just get that far in a story and then _not_ tell me the ending! I want blackmail on Jungwoo!"

Taeyong looks at him strangely. "That is so weird to hear coming from Mark's mouth."

"Mhmm," Jungwoo hums in agreement, guiding Mark to lay down on the table so he can copy the sigil on his forearm across Mark's chest. "I liked it when Mark was nice."

"I still _am_ nice," Mark protests, but is immediately shut up by Jungwoo poking at his stomach with a wyvern scale. Taeyong sets up a few carefully-placed candles around Mark's body before sending a pointed glance to Donghyuck. It takes him a moment to figure out what he means, but when Taeyong tips one of the candles toward him, he snaps his fingers. Sparks fly through the air, landing gently on each of the wicks, lighting them up. "Woah," Mark says. "That's cool."

"Been working on my accuracy," Donghyuck brags.

"You still have a long way to go, Donghyuck," Jungwoo reminds him none-too-gently. Donghyuck nods, ego deflating a bit, remembering how he'd lit Jungwoo's sweatshirt on fire during training the other day.

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

Jungwoo inclines his head approvingly before turning to Mark. "Think of what I'm about to do as a pre-test. I'll just be poking a bit at your soul to try and loosen it from Donghyuck's body and just to get a feel of exactly how to best go about undoing this."

"Why can't you do it to Donghyuck?" Mark asks. Out of context, it might sound like a complaint, but Donghyuck can tell that Mark's just legitimately curious.

"Because it's your magic that instigated the switch, so it's your magic, and subsequently your _soul,_ that I need to take a look at," Jungwoo explains, readying some blueish powdered substance and rubbing it onto his hands before turning his palms face down and pressing them to Mark's chest. "Now, this might be a little uncomfortable, and you might lose feeling in your fingers or toes, but nothing should hurt. Let me know immediately if it does and I'll retract. Got it?"

Mark gives a little noise of confirmation before settling his head back onto the table, closing his eyes. Donghyuck shuffles a little closer so he's standing next to Taeyong by the countertop to get a better look at this. Spiritual sigils aren't one of the most common practices, but Jungwoo has gone out of his way to make it his forte, right after fire manipulation, and Donghyuck is more than curious to see what it's like firsthand.

"You gonna include this as evidence for your doctorate thesis?" Taeyong asks, grinning when Jungwoo cracks an eye open to glare at Taeyong.

"Shut the fuck up," he says, closing his eye again. "Ready, Mark?"

"Ready as I'll ever be."

Jungwoo nods, and the room goes cold. The candles flare up. Donghyuck can feel his own magic stirring in the depths of his chest at the overwhelming presence of another's. It's stuck between shrinking away into Donghyuck's bones and wanting to leap out and join the tug of the current. Taeyong rests a hand on Donghyuck's shoulder to steady him, and his magic settles. He's left with nothing except for the violent urge to set something on fire, which isn't terribly out of the ordinary.

It's easy to forget just how powerful Jungwoo is between all of his wisecracks and practical jokes—most of which Donghyuck has picked up on—but it's at times like this that he's rather forcefully reminded of why the High Council has had their eye on him for years.

Just as everything starts, it all goes wrong.

Jungwoo's finger twitches, a bead of sweat falling into the intricately placed ash on Mark's torso. Mark's eyes fly open and he lets out a near-inhuman cry of pain, back arching off the table as he tries to escape Jungwoo's touch. Donghyuck feels a burning in his chest, like his magic has set itself ablaze, and the last thing he remembers is falling.

⇄

Waking up is a bitch and a half, but honestly Donghyuck doesn't know what else to expect from passing out for the second time that day.

His head is throbbing and it feels like all of his insides were just turned into a nice minestrone soup. His mouth is dry and his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth and he can't open his eyes on the first try because the lids feel so heavy.

Blearily squinting into the room, he sees a heavily blanketed figure curled up in the armchair across from him. His vision isn't clear enough to really see them, but by process of elimination—and the surreal familiarity of the figure—Donghyuck deduces that it's him. Or, well, it's Mark. His hands are trembling so badly that the tea in his mug sloshes up the sides. He looks pale and shaken in a way that Donghyuck has never seen his own face before.

"What the fuck was that?" he croaks, pain flaring up in his chest as he tries to sit up. Mark nearly drops his mug as he looks over at Donghyuck.

"You're awake," he says, breathless.

"How observant," Donghyuck groans. "I certainly wish I wasn't."

Mark cracks a smile at that, taking a timid sip of his tea. It's chamomile and lavender. Donghyuck can smell it from his seat on the couch, reminding him of all the times Jungwoo had brewed it for him after a particularly tough day at training.

"Mark? What's—Donghyuck! You're up!" Taeyong gushes, flitting into Donghyuck's view to press a cool palm against his forehead. "How are you feeling."

"Awful." He grins. "But I've had worse. You forget Jungwoo is my mentor."

Taeyong smiles, ruffling his hair, clearly not noticing how Donghyuck is downplaying every single one of his muscle fibers screaming out to him in agony. Mark, however, seems to catch on, and gives him a funny look. Donghyuck waves him off.

"You passed out nearly immediately from either the influx of magical current passing through you, or just the pain of your soul trying to extract itself from your body involuntarily," Jungwoo explains, sidling up to Taeyong.

"But I thought you weren't trying to switch the souls back?"

Jungwoo shakes his head, perplexed. "I wasn't. You two did this of your own volition. I barely nudged the barrier of his magic and everything went haywire. You fainted, but Mark..." he trails off.

"I'm fine, Woo," Mark pipes up from behind them reassuringly. "Seriously."

"Wait, no, what happened?" Donghyuck sits up straighter. "Why does Mark look death warmed over?"

"Hey!"

"Mark was kept conscious by the power of his own magic because it was fighting against not one but two intruders: the new body and me."

"Why didn't it fight back against the new body earlier?" Donghyuck asks, but Jungwoo just looks at Taeyong. Taeyong shrugs rather unhelpfully.

"I have no idea. Maybe because his magic hadn't been stimulated until then. Maybe because his magic didn't sense a difference between the hosts. There are any number of reasons, but none of them are relevant now."

Donghyuck purses his lips, pressing at his temples. His head throbs. He should probably stop thinking so hard. "So... if Mark tries to use magic again his soul will try to eject itself out of his body?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Jungwoo says rather unhelpfully. "We don't know."

"There's a lot we don't know," Taeyong mumbles, slumping backward a bit. Donghyuck doesn't know him well, but he gets the feeling Taeyong is used to being in the loop for everything, and not knowing what's going on right now is throwing him off substantially. The comforting hand Jungwoo rests on the back of Taeyong's neck tells him he's probably right.

"I'd wager that I'm fine," Mark says, and Donghyuck's eyes snap over to where Mark has a freshly-sprouted, tiny sapling in the palm of his hand. He looks a little pale still, but not in pain or disoriented. "What do we do now?"

"I did a little preliminary research while Donghyuck was still conked out—"

"Please never say that phrase again," Taeyong pleads. Jungwoo blatantly ignores him.

"—And I might've found something," Jungwoo barrels on. "How familiar are you guys with your permanent curses?"

"Not very," Donghyuck scoffs at the same time Mark says, "Pretty familiar."

Jungwoo scowls at Donghyuck while Taeyong takes a moment to turn and shoot Mark a grin. Donghyuck feels an awful surge of jealousy creep up his throat. It's not exactly foreign, especially when it comes to Mark, but that doesn't mean it's any easier to swallow back down.

"Fucking _knew_ I should've chosen the other Lee," Jungwoo grumbles.

"Hey, now! I ranked higher than him in the prelims," Donghyuck defends himself.

"That was three years ago!" Mark butts in. "Freshman year evals don't count for shit, everyone knows this."

"Alright, alright, that's enough," Taeyong interrupts them. "We'll continue this discourse later when you're back in the _right bodies!"_ He still looks a little smug about the whole argument, that someone is so impressed with his student that they’d be willing to trade their own, even jokingly.

"Have you ever heard of an Irrefutable Truth?" Jungwoo asks, moving away to the bookshelf tucked in the corner of the living room, dragging a finger across the thick, bound spines of books that Donghyuck would be willing to bet are older than the university itself.

"It's used for binding curses," Mark says slowly, as if he's trying to recite a textbook passage that's ingrained in his head. "Something that strengthens them. The stronger the Truth, the stronger the curse... but the moment the Truth stops being true, then the curse loses its power."

"The truer the Truth, the stronger it is, yes," Jungwoo agrees, making a triumphant little noise when he finds whatever he's looking for and pulls out a book that's bigger than his entire chest, dropping it down on the floor with little finesse. Donghyuck winces as a small dust cloud billows up. "Do you know what properties it has on the spirit, though?"

Mark shakes his head. "Can't say Prof Byun taught us anything about that in Curses 101."

"It's not exactly _hypothetical_ but it hasn't had extraneous _testing_ either because generally speaking, people don't put curses bound with Irrefutable Truths on other people. It's just not cool, and the High Council tends to frown upon shit like that." Jungwoo makes a weird face. "Trust me, I'd know."

"You don't wanna know," Taeyong murmurs when Donghyuck looks at him quizzically.

"In short, an Irrefutable Truth affects the spirit. It's something so true that the very soul of the caster knows it to be so, and by tying the will of the spirit into a curse, it gets exponentially stronger. This brings about my theory, I think." Jungwoo flips through the pages of the yellowing pages of the book that Donghyuck's half surprised don't just disintegrate under his touch. "Ah, here we are. Irrefutable Truths can be used not only to strengthen the casting of curses, but to weaken, and even completely expire existing ones."

He looks up at the other three in the room eagerly, clearly pleased with his find, but he's greeted with the same, blank stare from each of them.

"Care to translate that?" Donghyuck asks after a moment of painful silence. Jungwoo groans.

"Isn't it self explanatory?" Jungwoo fires back.

Mark shakes his head slowly. "Not really... this isn't a curse?"

"That's just the thing!" Jungwoo exclaims. "It _is."_

"Potions don't work like that—" Mark starts.

"But they _can,"_ Taeyong interjects. "Depending on the composition of it, and exactly how much of your and Donghyuck's magic ended up getting thrown into the mix... it's a distinct possibility... and then that would also explain why your souls are so tightly bound to a host that isn't naturally theirs."

Donghyuck is only semi-following what everyone else in the room is going on about but he thinks he has the gist. He regrets not paying more attention in his prerequisite Curses course instead of just cheating off of his neighbor's tests for the whole semester. Granted, it was an easy A so he's still not really complaining.

"So..." The pounding in Donghyuck's head is back in full force before he'd even noticed it was gone. He _really_ should stop thinking so hard. "What does the whole Irreversible Truth—"

"Irrefutable," Mark corrects.

"Whatever. What does that have to do with us? How does it help?"

"You both need to tell each other an Irrefutable Truth," Jungwoo concludes, clearly very satisfied with his academic sleuthing. Donghyuck tries not to find it too irritating right now.

"Okay, cool." Donghyuck turns to Mark. "I'm wearing your underwear right now and the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I get." He sits back on the couch, arms crossed. "Your turn."

Mark splutters, cheeks flaming—Donghyuck didn't even _know_ he could blush like that. "That's— Donghyuck, that's not—"

"It doesn't work like that, idiot." Jungwoo throws a piece of bicorn horn at him. Donghyuck has no idea where he pulled it from, but he ducks to the side with ease. "It has to be something meaningful, something profound. Something you know in your heart but probably wouldn't think of immediately."

"Thanks," Donghyuck deadpans. "That sure limits it down."

"Look, Irrefutable Truths don't exactly go making themselves known every day. Every person only has a certain amount, and oftentimes speaking it aloud leads to its eventual demise. They come to the seeker when the seeker stops looking."

"And just when I thought you couldn't be any _less_ helpful." Donghyuck watches Jungwoo throw another chunk of bicorn horn at him, and this time it manages to hit Donghyuck square in the jugular. _"Hey!"_

"Stop being an idiot on purpose," Jungwoo scolds. "The Truth will come to you when your souls are ready, and there's no way of being able to tell when that is."

"Not to mention the bridge!" Taeyong sing-songs, clearly enjoying this all of a sudden. Donghyuck glances over to see Mark, completely scarlet in the face, head in his hands.

"What's the bridge?"

"The connection you have to form between the bodies for souls to find their way back!" Taeyong claps his hands together. "Isn't that right, Mark?"

"Yeah," comes the muffled reply.

"And the standard form of bridge for any curse is a kiss!" Taeyong winks.

Donghyuck didn't realize he was at the end of his rope with these two until there's suddenly nothing left to grab onto. He's thankful for them, really, because they shed some invaluable light on how to remedy this, but at the same time, he's _so_ sick of them. Really, he can only handle so much of Jungwoo per week, and he's surpassed his quota at least twice over.

"Alright, we're leaving," Donghyuck announces, standing up. "Thanks for the help, we'll deal with it from here."

He's surprised he manages to stand up on the first try, but he plays off the shakiness and strides over to yank Mark up. Hasty apologies and goodbyes fall from Mark's lips as Donghyuck nearly drags him out of Jungwoo and Taeyong's apartment, not an ounce of remorse passing through him when he sees the absolute disaster of ash, chalk, and wax they left in the kitchen.

"See you soon—"

Donghyuck slams the door pointedly behind them to cut off the rest of Jungwoo's shout. He leans back up against the surface, the handle digging into the small of his back, and lets out a sigh. He's so tired.

"Are you okay?" Mark asks softly, and Donghyuck's thrown off by the sound of his own voice. He looks up to see his own face staring worriedly back at him. They're close.

Like, _really close._

Donghyuck gets a really bad idea, as Donghyuck tends to do.

"I wanna try something," he says without any preamble. He monitors Mark's expression carefully, watching the little pucker between his brows deepen for a moment.

"Okay," Mark complies after a beat. "What do you— _mmf!"_

Donghyuck grabs Mark by the collar and yanks him into a kiss. It's nice—granted, a little weird—but nothing _happens._ No magic stirring, no feeling like there had been back in their own apartment. Just devastatingly normal. Mark reels back, flushed down to the base of his neck. Seriously, Donghyuck didn't even know his face could _do_ that.

"I think the Truth is supposed to come _before_ the, uh, you know..." Mark waves his hands vaguely in front of him. "The bridge."

"Didn't hurt to try." Donghyuck shrugs before starting back off in the direction of home.

Home, huh.

He doesn't know when his shared space with Mark started being more of a home than the place where his family lived, but he supposes it makes sense. That godforsaken place has never really been much of a home at all, and his mild amiability with Mark was always much easier to stomach than the complicated mess that is his family.

They've been friendly on the best of days and strangers on the worst. They've never really fought nor have they ever bonded, but Mark's a good roommate. He's quiet, he pays his half of the rent on time, he cleans up after himself—well, minus today. There's not a lot to their relationship, and they've been more than okay with that for a couple years now. If Donghyuck's being honest, he doesn't know the first thing about Mark. Whether he has siblings, what his favorite food is, hell, Donghyuck didn't even know his _major_ until last year.

So what in sweet Merlin's name could Donghyuck's Irrefutable Truth be?

The walk back to the apartment is damn near silent, aside from the one person in the quad who shouts Mark's name, and it takes Mark nudging Donghyuck's side for him to remember exactly whose body he's inhabiting. A tentative wave back placates the stranger, and they both keep their heads a little lower.

The apartment has never seemed more quiet than it does right now, as the two of them enter together and Donghyuck tosses his keys down in the bowl on the countertop, Mark's immediately following.

"Uh, so—" Donghyuck starts.

"We can't tell anyone," Mark blurts, interrupting him. "We can't. No one can know about this." Mark hesitates before adding a soft, "please."

Donghyuck opens his mouth to ask why Mark would want to keep this on the down low when asking for help might be their best way to the quickest solution, but then he stops. Thinks. And it makes sense.

There could be serious consequences for Mark if any advisors ever catch wind of it, and Mark would never be able to put an accident that affected the wellbeing of another student behind him. Not to mention the trouble that Jungwoo and Taeyong would also get into, despite having good intentions. The ridicule Donghyuck would surely have to endure from his _friends_ because of something like this, not to mention his _family._ He actively shivers at the thought.

"Okay," Donghyuck agrees, mind still running a million miles a minute. "Yeah, that's okay with me."

"Wait, really?" Mark looks a little taken aback. "You're cool with that?"

"I have my own reasons, just like you have yours," Donghyuck replies, and Mark shrugs, understanding. He's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he thanks Donghyuck quietly before slinking back off to his own room. It's in the wee hours of the morning by now, and all Donghyuck wants to do is close his eyes and become one with his mattress, but the universe has different plans for him.

He spends the next few hours searching up everything related to Irrefutable Truths on Google—he even resorts to Yahoo in a moment of unspeakable desperation—but comes up relatively empty handed. There's no other information out there that might help them that they don't already know thanks to Jungwoo.

Sleep doesn't come easy that night, Donghyuck's only comfort coming from the soft sounds of Mark tossing and turning in his own bed just on the other side of the paper-thin drywall.

⇄

There's no sudden breakthrough on how to fix things, no clear answer in sight.

Instead of focusing on resolving the problem, they silently resolve to work on the next best solution together: making it work, which proves to be a lot easier said than done, especially once Donghyuck's professors start catching onto the fact that something is a little odd.

"Mark, could you stay after for a moment?" Professor Qian stops him by the elbow before he can escape the lecture hall. A quick glance at Jeno tells him that they'll be able to meet up later, so Donghyuck nods and steps aside until all of the other students have filed out.

"What can I do for you, prof?"

"How are your study habits as of late?" Professor Qian asks, waving to his TA—Sicheng—on his way out.

"They're uh—" Donghyuck gets a sudden, unbidden image of pulling his hair out the night before over a potions assignment he couldn't make sense of. "They're fine."

"You've improved a lot in your elemental basics recently, fire especially, which was just peculiar to me," Qian explains. "I was just curious what changed, since I know you'd been struggling with it for a while."

Donghyuck is taken aback. He didn't ever know that Mark struggled with _anything,_ let alone what Donghyuck considered to be his own strength. Mark has always just seemed like the perfect prodigy student. A little hurt, he wonders why Mark never came to him for help.

"Oh, my roommate has been helping me," Donghyuck says, and it isn't a complete lie. Mark's body has had a lot of help from Donghyuck's soul.

"And who might that be?"

"Donghyuck. Lee Donghyuck."

"Ah, that would make sense then," Professor Qian muses to himself. "Donghyuck is one of our finest students, well on his way to becoming an Elemental Master himself some day." Qian looks down at the sigil emblazoned on his skin of a wave, the sign of his Mastery. Every sigil is different, and Donghyuck can't help but wonder what his own will look like someday. "I'm very glad you have him to help because I know how much this course has been frustrating you. I wish you luck in your continued studies, and please never be afraid to come to me for help."

"Of course! Thanks Professor Qian!"

"Any time, Mark," he dismisses.

Donghyuck can't get his head to empty on his walk home like he used to be so good at. Jungwoo always drilled the importance of mediation into his head, and clearing the mind to channel his magic more steadily, but all Donghyuck can do right now is be thankful that he doesn't have training tonight.

He returns to an empty apartment, which isn't odd. Mark tends to spend a lot of time away from the apartment nowadays, claiming extra training or studying. Tonight, though, Mark isn't far behind because not a minute after Donghyuck has boiled a mug of water in his palm to steep some tea, the front door unlocks.

Mark trudges in, kicking his shoes off uncharacteristically carelessly, tossing his keys in the bowl on the counter as he passes by. He smells a little smokey and the ends of his hair are suspiciously singed.

"Hey, Mark, are you—"

"I'm heading to bed. Goodnight."

Donghyuck is left staring at Mark's closed door, Professor Qian's words still ringing in his ears.

⇄

"You fucked up my duel today?" Donghyuck yells, slamming the front door shut behind him in a fit of rage. "Do you have any idea how much of my semester grade that was _worth?_ And you lost against Huang _fucking_ Renjun, who I've been winning against for two and a half years straight? Merlin, I'm never going to live this down—"

Donghyuck cuts himself off when he finally catches sight of Mark, curled up on the living room couch, cup of something suspiciously blue and viscous in his trembling grip that Donghyuck immediately recognizes as a speed healing potion.

But that's not what's important.

Mark's arms are covered in bandages from his shoulders down, with even the tips of his fingers wrapped in gauze. The peek of skin that Donghyuck can make out from under the white is red and raw, covered in a thick, green salve that Donghyuck knows is for severe burns. Donghyuck looks back into the kitchen and sees a disaster of ingredients out, a cauldron—granted, a much smaller one than the last one Donghyuck saw Mark using in the kitchen—still out on the stove with a dribble of blue running down the side.

Mark must've made the potion himself while his hands were still burnt, and Donghyuck's stomach twists uncomfortably.

"What happened?" Donghyuck asks, much softer. He approaches Mark carefully, perching himself on the opposite arm of the sofa.

Mark still flinches away at the sound of his voice. "I'm sorry."

"But what _happened?"_ Donghyuck repeats. "I thought you said you were getting better at this."

Mark laughs, but it's dry and humorless. Donghyuck is the one who flinches away this time.

"Apparently not." Mark takes a sip of the potion and grimaces, but takes another directly after anyway. Donghyuck knows firsthand how disgusting it is—he's certainly had his fair share of burns in his basic level courses, but he's much better about things now. "I'm sorry, though. I did try. I think Renjun went easy on me, too."

"Stop apologizing, Mark," Donghyuck scolds. "I can't expect you to just catch up on years of elemental dueling in such a short period of time. That was unfair of me, and _I'm_ the one who should be sorry."

Mark gives him a shaky smile over the rim of his cup. "Thank you, Donghyuck," he murmurs. "Just hearing that means more than you know."

"Alright, now let me do your bandages, this was _abysmal,"_ Donghyuck declares gesturing for Mark to follow him into the bathroom. "You'll never heal up correctly like that. Also, we're ordering pizza for dinner, you don't have a choice."

Looking a little overwhelmed but terribly grateful, Mark meanders after him down the hallway and, for once, lets himself be taken care of.

⇄

When Donghyuck wakes up, there's a book on his nightstand that wasn't there before. It's relatively thick, and leather-bound—by someone inexperienced by the looks of it.

 _Potions for Dummies,_ the title reads. _A guide for newbies by Mark Lee._

Donghyuck snorts, rolling over to thumb through it. It's full of meticulous notes and colorful diagrams. It's potionmastery explained in a way that Donghyuck has never seen before, and in just the few minutes he takes to look it over, he already feels like he's learned something.

He checks his phone. It's Saturday. He has nothing to do...

Nothing, that is, except for making Mark a study guide of his own.

By the end of the day, the pages of the notebook are slightly singed, three entire pens sit in Donghyuck's garbage, now out of ink, and Donghyuck's wrists _ache._

With the way Mark positively lights up when Donghyuck hands him _Incendiary Mastery for Dummies, a guide for struggling Mark Lees by Lee Donghyuck,_ though, Donghyuck decides that it was all worth it.

⇄

They're a month into this with no end in sight, but Donghyuck'll be damned if anyone says it's for lack of trying. There's barely been a night when he and Mark aren't up together, poring over old spellbooks on the floor of their living room, trying to piece together another way to solve this.

If they're not looking at those spellbooks, they're studying each other's notes and giving each other tips and tricks on how to be better at what their respective bodies _should_ be good at. It's not easy.

Mark burns himself a lot, but not quite as much or as severely as before. He's still scared, but he's getting better. Donghyuck has taken to sneaking down to the football field with Mark in tow so they can practice freely there. Mark even gets to meet the dragons and, much to Donghyuck's dismay, they take a liking to him instead of eating him.

Donghyuck lets Mark quiz him on the hundreds of potion ingredients and their possible uses and combinations, and manages to only blow up one in three or four tries of a new potion instead of every time. Mark's almost despicably gentle in guiding him, and Donghyuck admires his seemingly endless patience with the constant failures.

He comments as such, but Mark only tells him that Donghyuck's been the exact same way, he just doesn't see it.

But despite how much they get along, tensions run high occasionally. The lack of privacy gets on Mark's introverted nerves just as the overabundance of studying riles Donghyuck up since he's chosen a track that allows him to ride off of his natural magical strength instead of something he has to mentally work for.

The only reprieve they each get to be the real version of themselves is when they go to training. Jungwoo doesn't say anything when Donghyuck hurls fireballs through the goalposts in the stadium for an hour one night because he hasn't been able to let go all week, and Donghyuck looks away when Mark comes home with various potion ingredients sticking out of his apron pockets, a small, satisfied smile on his face.

⇄

Surprisingly enough, there's no issue at all until Na Fucking Jaemin decides he wants to say something after Dragon Anatomy—who the fuck decides to take _Dragon Anatomy_ as an elective for fun?—one afternoon. Apparently Mark. Donghyuck finds another bout of irritation welling up in him, but stamps it down as soon as he hears:

"Hey, Mark!" he calls. "Wait up!"

It takes a second for Donghyuck to register that it's _him_ that's being called; he really doesn't think he'll ever get used to that. Dragging his feet a little, he lets Jaemin catch up to him.

"What's up, Jaemin?" he asks, looking over. Jaemin has dyed his hair again, this time a warm, peachy pink. Donghyuck doesn't know how his scalp hasn't fallen off his head by this point. He's been spending time with Jaemin for less than a month and he's already cycled through three colors, and Donghyuck doesn't give a _damn_ what magic-infused products he may be using, that can't be good for _anyone's_ hair count.

"Can we talk?" he asks slowly, as if broaching the topic might make him run away.

"We are talking," Donghyuck responds. The weird look Jaemin gives him makes him backtrack, remembering that Mark clearly doesn't talk back to his friends as much as he should, especially for all the shit they tend to give him. "Sorry, yeah, I have a little time before my next class."

Jaemin grins, taking Donghyuck's wrist and pulling him to sit down on the wooden bench picnic table beneath one of the giant maple trees in the middle of the quad. Jaemin perches himself on the table, his knee knocking gently into Donghyuck's shoulder.

"Are you okay?"

Donghyuck gives him a funny look. "Yeah?" It comes out as much more of a question than it's supposed to. "Why do you ask?"

Jaemin turns his gaze from Donghyuck's face, face tilting upward and eyes closing to catch the rays of sun that dapple their way through the gaps in the leafy canopy above them. "Am I not allowed to worry about my best friend?"

"With evidence, yes." Donghyuck pats Jaemin's knee gingerly. Jaemin flicks his fingers away absently.

"You just get a little too far into your head sometimes, and I like to check in with you. Make sure you're doing okay. I know the holidays are coming up so you'll have to go back home..." Jaemin trails off pensively before chuckling. "Not to mention you've been super weird around Donghyuck recently. I guess I was just curious of you did something stupid like confess your undying love only to get rejected."

Donghyuck stares at Jaemin like he's grown a third head. He had no idea Mark and Jaemin talked about him, but from what he's figured out about Jaemin is that he can never quite tell when he's joking and when he's not. It's a bit of an issue, but so far Donghyuck has played it off relatively well.

"No...?" Donghyuck squints up at him. "M—Donghyuck and I are getting along just fine. No love confessions here."

Jaemin hums, contemplative. "If he ever fucks with you, I'll beat him up."

"No you wouldn't," Donghyuck replies, a competitive reflex more than anything. Jaemin just laughs.

"You're right, I'd enlist Yukhei to do it," Jaemin snickers, making Donghyuck laugh in turn because he _knows_ Yukhei, and Yukhei wouldn't hurt a fly despite how stupidly buff he is. He's going into veterinary studies with a focus on _pegasi_ for Merlin's sake. People can't get much less threatening than that. "I just—" Jaemin reaches out and squeezes Donghyuck's hand. "I care about you, okay? I just want you to come talk to me if you ever need anything. I want you to be okay."

Donghyuck strokes his thumb across Jaemin's fingers carefully. "I'm okay, I promise. I'll tell you if I ever need anything."

Jaemin looks down at him and smiles so brightly that Donghyuck has to blink the image out of his retinas a few seconds later. "Good. Now get to class. You know how much Qian's a stickler for being on time."

Donghyuck groans, exaggerated and loud enough to make Jaemin howl with laughter, torso curling over his knees with the force of it.

"Tell Shotaro I say hi." Donghyuck sticks out his tongue as he eases himself up from his seat, watching Jaemin's ears turn pink at the mere mention of the young—but certainly not _little_ by any means—elemental prodigy.

"Shut the fuck up, Mark, or I'll tell Donghyuck all about what you told me last New Year's," Jaemin threatens. Well, it _sounds_ like a threat. Donghyuck has no clue what they talked about, but as he glances at his phone, he comes to the irritating realization that he doesn't have time to sneakily be filled in if he wants to get to Qian's class on time.

Damn the fact that Mark cares about attendance.

He settles for a neutral, "Don't you dare!" before dashing off.

Try as he may, he can't focus enough during Qian's lecture to take even halfway decent notes for Mark to study, his mind dwelling on Jaemin's last words to him. He's lucky that Jeno is kind enough to let Donghyuck take a picture of his neatly scrawled notes so he can copy them down for Mark later. No need to tell him anything about where his mind was instead of on the professor. Nope.

⇄

Christmas break comes a lot faster than it's supposed to. Last time Donghyuck checked, they had _weeks._ Now they have mere _days_ and still have yet to settle on a plan for exactly how they're going to tackle this.

"My family can't know, Mark, I don't think you get it," Donghyuck protests, taking a frustrated bite of pizza. It's good. That annoys him. Mark got to choose the toppings this time around.

"Mine can't either!" Mark exclaims, running his hands through his hair. Donghyuck has never seen Mark so stressed, shoulders drawn up tight and expression pinched—silently, Donghyuck makes a vow to never make his face do that if _that's_ what he looks like. His pacing through the kitchen and living room makes loose papers and unweighted pages flutter in his wake, not to mention the little daisies that have begun to sprout at his heels, leaning after him as he walks away.

It's kind of adorable. Mark makes flowers sprout when stops trying to keep full control of his magic, like he does so diligently the rest of the time. It's surprisingly tame, given the power Mark has simmering through his veins. Donghyuck has _felt it,_ and it's not something to joke about.

"Look, my parents are some of the most powerful mages in this hemisphere, if not in the world. My entire extended family is going to be there, and no one would ever let me hear the end of a screw-up this big."

Mark snorts, mirthful. "So it's your pride on the line again, I see."

"Mark," Donghyuck snaps.

"Hey, I never said that was an issue." Mark raises his hands, placating.

Donghyuck puts down his pizza slice with a huff. "Fine, then what's _your_ reason, Mr. High-and-Mighty?"

Mark falters so visibly that Donghyuck almost feels bad for asking. _Almost._

"Neither of my parents have a very strong magical affinity... neither of them got accepted at any universities like this because their magic simply wasn't potent enough to pass the prelims." Mark takes a deep breath, sitting down carefully on the edge of the couch. "They make fine money, that's not the issue, but... I'm here on scholarship anyway, you know? And if I were to come home after making a mistake as big as this, I'd just disappoint them. And frustrate them," Mark laughs a little, but there's no humor at all. "They value being practical problem solvers because they don't have magic to rely on, and coming home with an issue that can only be solved by magic... It wouldn't be good, let's just leave it at that."

Donghyuck has to sit back for a moment and let the words sink in. He'd always just had this impression of Mark being the perfect child with the perfect family and the perfect life, and never once did he stop to _ask._ He assumed the same things about Mark that everyone else tends to assume about _him,_ and _fuck_ Donghyuck is such a hypocrite.

The silence in the apartment is drowned out by Mark's speaker on the coffee table pumping out soft lo-fi, and Donghyuck is thankful. The quiet in the apartment has been nothing short of overwhelming lately, usually only disturbed by soft page turns and even softer breathing.

"Well, then," Donghyuck sighs. "I guess there's only one solution."

"Which is?" Mark turns his gaze on Donghyuck, and it's despairingly hopeless.

"We stay switched," Donghyuck concludes. "There's no other way this is going to work. We've both promised our families we'd be home, and there's no resolution in sight yet, so..." Donghyuck tosses his hands up in a noncommittal gesture. "We aren't left with a whole lot."

"Wait, wait," Mark cries, standing up so fast he almost trips backward onto the couch. "I don't know the first thing about your family! I can't do this! I can barely act like you _here!"_

Donghyuck lets a slow grin spread onto his face. It feels as unnerving as it probably looks to Mark. "The solution is to not act like me. Act like _you._ They'll be so infatuated they won't be concerned that I'm not acting like myself."

"Infatuated?" Mark tilts his head to the side just barely. "What do you mean?"

"You're absolutely _adorable,_ Mark Lee, hasn't anyone told you this?" Donghyuck picks up his pizza again. "Just be yourself and my family will love you."

"But—" Mark sputters out, tongue not working as fast as his brain is. "But I don't even know any of their names!"

"Then we have three days to study our asses off for what honestly might be the most important test of your life," Donghyuck declares, spinning around in his chair. "This means you have to finally let me follow you on Instagram so I can get a head start."

Mark flounders for a moment, mouth opening and closing around words that never pass his lips. Finally, with a grumble, Mark pulls out his phone and begrudgingly unlocks it and hands it to Donghyuck.

He sends Mark the sweetest smile he can muster, but only receives a scowl in return.

Somehow, it still feels like progress. Progress toward _what,_ though, Donghyuck has no damn idea.

⇄

Showering is still a weird experience as far as being in a different body goes, but it feels nice to just stand under a stream of hot water after the long flight back home. Or, well to _Mark's_ home. The shower was mostly an excuse to collect himself after the onslaught of Mark's family he received at the front door before he could even knock.

Two younger brothers, a baby sister, and parents all popped out to crush him in a hug that Donghyuck almost doesn't know what to do with. This certainly isn't the greeting he ever gets with his own family. Channeling his best inner older brother, he scoops Mark's sister—Mina—into his arms and gives her a kiss on the forehead, staggering as Jisung and Sungchan do their best to take him down at the kneecaps.

The moment he steps out of the bathroom, they're there to try and do the same thing. Donghyuck greets them with a tired laugh, kneeling down to hug them close. A throat being cleared just down the hallway makes the boys spring apart, looking curiously guilty.

"I thought I sent you two to bed, not to bother your brother," Mark's mom chastises lightly, but there's a poorly hidden smile tucked into the crinkled corners of her eyes. "Off to sleep, you two. You can see him again in the morning once he's gotten some rest." She gives him a look. "I'm sure he's exhausted."

Jisung and Sungchan toddle off back to their shared room before they can get any more of a scolding, and Donghyuck straightens himself up, wincing as his knees crack.

"They missed you," she says. "They're a little lost without their magical big brother right now, especially as they're finally starting to manifest." There's a hint of bitterness somewhere in her words, coated in years of practiced normalcy and acceptance that Donghyuck is a shade too familiar with to just gloss over.

He takes a deep breath, and takes a tentative step forward. "Mom," he tries. She looks at him, that kindness never leaving her features. "I would never have become who I am without you two. Strong magical affinities or not, you are the best parents I could've asked for growing up. I know it's hard when they don't see it now and ask for me, but please trust me when I promise you that they'll grow to understand just as I have."

"Mark, you don't have to say this," she tries, reaching out to take his hand in her own, but Donghyuck shakes his head.

"I think I do, though." Donghyuck thinks back to all the times Mark would leave the apartment to call home and come back looking like his soul has settled comfortably in his body once again, how he always looks to his lock screen—an old picture of the six of them on some family road trip—for comfort when things get to be a little too much. He remembers how Mark's reason for staying switched through the holiday break was nearly solely for the sake of his parents, and the little anecdotes about them that Mark told so Donghyuck would get. "You both are incredible parents, and Ma— I love you so much."

She doesn't reply for a moment, but when she looks back up at Donghyuck, her eyes glimmer with unshed tears and she's smiling.

"Mom—"

Mark's mother doesn't hesitate to pull Donghyuck into the warmest hug he's ever experienced, and Donghyuck rests his head on her shoulder, arms wrapped comfortably around her back.

"Thank you, Mark," she whispers. "You've grown up so well, and your father and I are unimaginably proud of the man you've become. We love you so much, please never forget that."

"I love you too, mom," he murmurs, holding her just a little tighter, chin hooked over her shoulder and eyes squeezed shut as he relishes the feeling. If Mark has parents like _this,_ no wonder he is the way he is.

He should call Mark—he promised he would after he landed but all he managed in the throes of his exhaustion was a quick text. After Mark's mom presses a kiss to his forehead and disappears into her own bedroom for the night, Donghyuck meanders back to the room he only really got a glance at when tossing down his luggage.

Mark's bedroom is both exactly what he expected and nothing like what he'd thought it'd be. Baby blue walls covered in memorabilia—a decent half of which, Donghyuck estimates, are probably gifts from his siblings—a messy desk in the corner, wide bookshelf just across from the twin sized bed with a navy blue duvet. There are sticky notes pasted haphazardly across surfaces in the room, hastily scrawled messages and reminders adorning them. It's a little cute, if Donghyuck allows himself to be honest for a moment.

He hasn't even pulled out his phone when it buzzes in his pocket, and he answers it without even looking.

"Hello?"

_"Hi."_

Donghyuck comes to the conclusion that it's very weird to hear his own voice pick up a call, especially when he can't see his face.

"Hey," he greets in reply, more sure of himself. "How's navigating the hellscape I call my family?"

 _"Surprisingly well,"_ Mark replies, shuffling something around on his end of the line. _"You were right about just being me."_

"I'm always right."

An undignified snort comes through the line, and Donghyuck can picture the exact face he must be making. _"Right."_

"I'm tempted to just stay as you at this point," Donghyuck jokingly divulges after the bit of silence between them stretches on too long. "Your mom gives the best hugs."

Mark sighs, wistful. _"Yeah, she does."_ He pauses for a moment, and Donghyuck feels guilt festering low in his stomach. Mark deserves to be here with his loving family for the holidays, not stuck with Donghyuck's disaster of one. Mark may have thought that Donghyuck suggesting the switch was purely out of pride, but no, it was out of selfishness. He bites his lip, self loathing levels reaching an all time high. _"How're the boys? And Mina? Treating you well, I hope?"_

"Oh yeah," Donghyuck exhales, glad to have a distraction. He could talk about Mark's siblings for hours. "Sungchan's an absolute sweetheart. Tried to share his dessert with me and everything. Jisung wouldn't leave my lap for nearly the entirety of game night—oh, and thanks for teaching me your tricks to winning Dragon's Head because otherwise I honestly think Sungchan would've won. Mina's a little ball of energy, just as you said. Always moving, always getting into trouble, and I'm sure Ji isn't helping that cause at all."

 _"He's always been the worst instigator among them,"_ Mark laughs, but falters halfway through. _"How are my parents?"_ His voice shakes just barely, but it's enough for Donghyuck to catch despite the terrible quality of the international call.

"They're doing just fine, Mark. They don't suspect a thing," he promises hastily. "They're just glad to have you home."

Mark breathes out slowly, and Donghyuck can picture the way his entire body deflates with it, finally relaxing after receiving the assurance he needs. _"Good."_

Donghyuck hums, walking over to inspect one of the more... _abstract_ works of art on the walls. A colorful crayon masterpiece, no doubt a gift from an even younger Sungchan by the looks of it. "I should be asking _you_ how _my_ parents are doing, honestly. I hope they haven't been giving you too hard of a time."

 _"They're intimidating, honestly, but I didn't know exactly what else I'd expect from the Prime Minister and her husband, which you conveniently failed to mention in your little family crash course,"_ Mark huffs. Donghyuck winces. _"Anyway, they've been kind, but a little distant, I guess? They said hi when I got there, but I haven't seen much of them since."_

"Trust me when I say to take that as a blessing," Donghyuck grumbles, tracing a finger along the wall as he aimlessly roams the room, phone tucked comfortably between his ear and shoulder. "Have you met Yangyang yet?"

 _"Oh, boy,_ have _I?"_ Mark wheezes. _"I met that whole side of the family and I'm exhausted."_ The sound of him flopping down onto a bed makes Donghyuck snort. _"And I thought_ my _brothers were high maintenance."_

"Be glad that Doyoung couldn't make it out this year—" Donghyuck picks up the Rubik's Cube on Mark's desk and fiddles with it.

_"Oh, Doyoung's here."_

"What?!" Donghyuck screeches, but immediately tones it down once he remembers where it is. "That bastard wasn't supposed to be coming home! He said he was spending the holidays at his fiancé's place!"

 _"Change of plans, he brought Johnny here instead of just going there,"_ Mark chuckles darkly, and Donghyuck feels a concerning amount of fear well up in his chest. If anyone's going to be able to sniff the peculiarity of Mark out, it's going to be Donghyuck's older brother. _"Things are so insane that no one's paying much attention to me, though, so I think I'm safe, but I'll keep you posted."_

"Oh, good. The wedding is getting close, anyway, so I think that'll keep people occupied. As much as I hate to say it, your best bet is sticking close to Yangyang."

 _"Your family really isn't as bad as you're making it out to be, you know—"_ Mark cuts himself off. _"Are you going through my room?"_

Donghyuck stops messing with the Rubik's Cube immediately, gingerly placing it back down on the desk where he'd found it. "No..." he says slowly.

_"I guess I can't really blame you, I've done my own fair share of snooping. Who knew you looked so nerdy in prep school? The braces really—"_

"No, no, we do not speak of my prep school years." Donghyuck shakes his head vigorously, as if he can whip the images of tiny him in various Star Wars t-shirts with a metal smile right out of his ears. "I'm sure I can find something equally as embarrassing for you, then we'll be even."

 _"Mhmm, good luck with that,"_ Mark challenges.

"I dunno, Markie, what are all these little notes doing—"

 _"You can't use the notes."_ Mark's response comes so abruptly that it takes Donghyuck aback. There's a shaky inhale from the other side of the line. _"Those are off-limits. Ignore them."_

Donghyuck hasn't even gotten to take a closer look at them yet, but there's something in Mark's voice that makes him back away. Something just a touch too vulnerable, voice catching on the end of syllables like Donghyuck knows he does when he's worked up about something. And Donghyuck gets it, really, and Mark's been great about this whole no privacy thing between them so far. If he chooses to draw the line at some notes, then Donghyuck will respect that.

"Okay, well what about... all these medals?" Donghyuck switches the subject, commenting on the first items he lays eyes on, which happens to be a little shelf above Mark's headboard with medals dangling off, and trophies collecting dust on the flat of it. "Mathlete or something?"

 _"Um, athlete, actually. No math involved,"_ Mark assures, as if Donghyuck's actually worried about it.

"What do you mean _athlete?"_ Donghyuck gasps, stepping up onto the mattress to get a better look at the display. "You can barely walk up the stairs of the charms building without getting winded!"

 _"Hey!"_ Mark protests. _"I'm not_ that _bad!"_

Donghyuck's no longer listening, though, instead absorbed in the words engraved onto various gold medals and trophy plaques. District champion. Division winner. Nationals qualifier. International invitational runner-up. Steep titles for someone who struggles to lift a single size pewter cauldron.

"Mark," he says, for a lack of other words. "What the hell. Why did I not know this?"

 _"I dunno, it never really seemed important..."_ Mark trails off, and Donghyuck can almost envision him picking at the cuffs of his sleeves. If he needed glasses in Donghyuck's body, he'd surely be pushing them up the bridge of his nose.

"Important? This is _incredible!"_ Donghyuck gasps, taking one of the trophies and feeling it in his hands. "What did you even do? None of them say..."

_"Oh, I swim. Swam. Did swim. Not anymore."_

"And why the hell not?" Donghyuck exclaims, lost on why Mark would give up on something he's clearly so good at.

Mark sighs, and it sounds so sad. _"You know the rules about magic in sports. We always figured I'd turn out to be like my parents, that my magic would never cross the potency threshold, so they let me join swimming when I was younger. I got good, I guess, and I liked it, but just as I was starting to get_ great, _my magic started to manifest. I wasn't allowed to participate anymore. So, I just dropped it altogether to focus on learning how to control my magic."_

"That seems... a little backwards to me, I guess?" Donghyuck plops down on the bed, trophy still in his hands. "Why would you just quit what you loved to work on the one thing that had just ruined your future?"

There's a huff, and some rustling. Mark must be just getting up for the day. _"I figured that if I would control what brought me down, it'd help me feel better in the long run. Like I have more control over my life than this thing inside of me, because I guess after all, the magic is a part of_ me, _and I needed to learn to accept it."_

"Ah," Donghyuck muses. "Mark, I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you're kind of incredible."

 _"Wha— Donghyuck nooo...!"_ Mark bemoans. _"That's not true, come on!"_

For as much as Donghyuck had learned about Mark, through photos and stories and lessons to try to be more like him, he finally feels like he has a grasp of who Mark is as a person. He's a family man, a bit of a romantic and an idealist, who was forced out of his dream future by something he was told he couldn't control, but somehow figured out how to.

He smiles to himself as he listens to Mark continue to whine. There's truly a lot more to him than meets the eye, and it's a shame it took so long for him to figure it out.

For the first time since it happened, Donghyuck finds himself being a little grateful for the whole potion accident because, without it, he'd never have truly made a friend like this.

⇄

"So," Jisung starts, looking Donghyuck dead in the eye, his little nine-year-old face reading of nothing but mischief. "Who were you talking to on the phone so late last night? Got a hot date?"

Donghyuck chokes on his cereal.

⇄

"You talk in your sleep, you know," Donghyuck starts off the call in lieu of an actual greeting, closing the door to Mark's bedroom behind him softly. He'd just been putting Sungchan to bed when Mark had called.

 _"Hello, Donghyuck, I'm doing well today, thanks for asking, how are you?"_ Mark replies, sarcastic but not scathing, his tone softened by something Donghyuck can't identify. _"And yes, I did know that."_

"Oh, well then thank you for the compliments." Donghyuck stifles his grin by biting the tip of his thumb, which is useless because Mark can't even see him.

Mark doesn't reply for a long moment. _"What did I say?"_ he asks, nervous all of a sudden.

"That I have nice thighs, which, thank you by the way, I worked hard for them."

There's frantic scrambling sounds on Mark's side. The call ends.

⇄

"You hung up on me last night," Donghyuck whines.

 _"You know, the solution to getting out of this whole mess is to be_ honest _with each other, you know?"_ Mark starts, ignoring Donghyuck. It sounds like he's been practicing that line all day. _"Pulling stunts like that isn't gonna help either of us find out Irrefutable Truths any sooner."_

"But you really said it. That and something about Johnny's pudding," Donghyuck singsongs, teasing. Mark swears rather loudly—he'd never knowingly told Donghyuck about any pudding incident, so he must draw the conclusion that Donghyuck's telling the truth. Poor him.

 _"Look, Donghyuck, I'm sorry,"_ he frets. _"You're just... a very attractive human being and— dude, being in your body is doing weird things to my mind, and I guess I just can't stop thinking about you—"_

"Wait, wait, back it up." Donghyuck holds up a hand before realizing Mark can't actually see him, and he slowly puts it down, feeling foolish. "You actually think that I have nice thighs?"

There's a moment of silence before Mark groans, _"Man, fuck you."_

And Donghyuck just has to laugh. "I was teasing! You didn't say anything about me, just kept rambling on about Johnny and chocolate pudding until I finally took pity and hung up on you. I guess—" he swallows hard— "I guess that I didn't expect you to actually admit to anything."

_"By Merlin— I'm hanging up on you now, Donghyuck. Sleep well. Call me in the morning."_

A click later, Mark is gone, but Donghyuck finds a blush sitting high on his cheeks long after his voice stops ringing in his ears.

⇄

With each passing day, the colorful little sticky notes get harder to ignore, and Donghyuck really does try to respect Mark's wishes to ignore them.

He _really does._

It's on the last evening that he breaks, and he personally thinks he should get credit for holding off that long, even if it didn't matter in the end at all. After Mark wishes him a soft goodnight and hangs up so Donghyuck can get some rest before his flight the next morning, Donghyuck can't stop staring at that little blue square half poking out of the nightstand drawer.

He reaches for it, stops himself momentarily, but then just grabs it anyway. Donghyuck reasons it can't be anything too incriminating if a different one can be found stuck to most any surface in his room. Smoothing it out between his fingers, he squints at the messy writing. The paper feels brittle. Absently, Donghyuck wonders how old it is.

All it says is, _don't overthink today, Mark!_

Nothing else, no other descriptors to clue Donghyuck in on what it might be for, or why it was haphazardly shoved into the nightstand. Unbidden, Donghyuck's curiosity levels go through the roof, and he stands up to search in quiet desperation for another sliver of Mark.

 _You look great today!_ is found in pink on the mirror by the dresser.

 _You're gonna do great on that test today!_ says the old calculus textbook in lime green.

 _You've got this! Take deep breaths!_ lilac calls from the back of the door.

They're all a little different, but they're also all the same in the respect that they're all little motivators. Donghyuck ends up with a stack a couple inches deep—although most of that height can be attributed to their stiff wrinkles unyielding under gravity's pull to compress closer—and in a whole array of colors.

It's adorable, really. Donghyuck smiles to himself because he can almost picture a younger Mark hastily scrawling himself little pick-me-up reminders to stay motivated before he heads out for the day.

He doesn't know how he's gonna put them all back because he doubts the adhesive will stay this time around, so he leaves them in their neat pile on the corner of the desk, feeling just as confused as when he started. Flopping back on the bed, his wrist hits the wall carelessly, and Donghyuck bites his lip so he doesn't curse unfortunately loudly in a house of five other sleeping people.

A second later, as he's still cradling his hand to his chest, something brushes against his forehead and flutters down into his lap. It's another sticky note that Donghyuck must've jostled off of—he looks up to understand where exactly it came from—what he's affectionately deemed as Little Mark's Achievement Shelf.

He expects more of the same, another adorably cheerful note with an adorning smiley face as a way to sign it off.

What he doesn't expect is what he sees.

 _Don't listen to them,_ it reads, _you're better than they say you are. Try to keep your head high. No more tears today, Minhyung._

The handwriting is more familiar, and it takes a second for Donghyuck to realize that's because the note is still soft between his fingertips. It's significantly more recent than the rest of them, and Donghyuck's heart sinks to the soles of his feet. He turns it over and has to put a palm to his mouth.

 _No more tears today, Markie! You are talented and deserve good things! I hope you'll see that some day,_ written neatly by a clearly very young Mark on an identically colored note stuck flush to the back of the first.

Donghyuck doesn't even realize there are tears in his eyes until one falls on the knuckle of his thumb, rolling down to wet the little pastel green note in his hands. It shines a whole new light on the reason for the notes in the first place, and Donghyuck's heart _aches._

It's not that the notes were a confidence _booster,_ they were what filled up the void in his absolute lack of confidence at all. Empty words written on empty slips to try and bring more meaning into his life. Donghyuck looks at the colorful stack on his desk, wondering when this all started—wondering just how young Mark was when he lost all sense of self worth.

There's nothing he wants to do more than wrap Mark in a hug and tell him he's been doing so well and deserves so much. He debates calling Mark again for a split second, but decides against it only once he has his finger hovering over Mark's contact.

⇄

The last day of the holidays comes much too quickly, and Donghyuck never thought he would dread returning to campus as much as he is right now. Sungchan is hanging off his back and Jisung is clinging to his knee while Mina has somehow wormed her way between the crook of Donghyuck's arm and the _Potions for Dummies_ he brought with him under the pretense of studying.

"I'll be back soon, you hooligans, but I've gotta go or I'll miss the bus to the airport!"

"Hold him down, Channie!" Jisung calls. "If he misses the bus, he can't go back!"

Mina gnaws at the sleeve of his sweatshirt enthusiastically, and Donghyuck can see Sungchan give an affirmative salute from behind his back before turning back into a veritable koala.

“Alright, alright,” Donghyuck laughs, reaching around with his free hand to pry Sungchan off. “I’ll bring my roommate home for spring break if you guys let go!” He doesn’t know where those words come from, or if they’ll really hold true, but they seem to do the trick.

Nearly immediately, Jisung backs off, taking Mina in his arms despite her squirming. “Are they magical?”

“Yeah!” Donghyuck nods, kneeling down so he can be at Jisung and Sungchan’s eye level. Mina blinks up at him from where she’s cradled to Jisung’s chest. “He can make fireworks with his finger, and if you behave and treat me nicely when I come home, I’m sure he’d love to show you.”

Sungchan’s eyes go adorably wide and, not for the first time, Donghyuck finds himself a little jealous of Mark’s family—finds himself wishing that he had loving younger siblings to dote upon all the time. He wonders why Mark doesn’t talk about them more. Maybe Donghyuck should start asking. 

“Fireworks?” Sungchan whispers, in awe. “You never play with fire.”

“I just have different strengths, that’s all,” Donghyuck explains, ruffling his hair. “Just like how your magic is gonna be different from Jisung’s, his is different from mine.” Donghyuck pokes at his chest gently. “Your magic changes with you, and you’re different from your brother, right?”

“Right!”

“Then you’ll get a special kind of magic all for yourself.”

Sungchan grins so hard his eyes disappear into little crescents, and Donghyuck pulls all three of Mark’s siblings into a hug, hoping desperately that this won’t be the last time. When he finally stands, he has to bite back a smile at how hard Jisung is trying to hold back his tears, teeth digging into a trembling lower lip. Sungchan notices, too, and throws an arm around his younger brother’s shoulders, whispering something to him that seems to cheer him up right away. Donghyuck thinks they’ll be just fine.

He straightens up to finally look at Mark’s parents, who don’t waste a moment to engulf him in a warm embrace together. He savors the feeling, the way his magic seems to settle more comfortably in his chest when they’re so free with their affection like this.

"Tell that roommate of yours we say hello," Mark's father says. Donghyuck freezes in their hold.

"What? Why?"

Mark's mother laughs, pulling back to ruffle his hair. "You talked about him all the time, sweetheart. He really  _ should  _ come visit for spring break with you."

"I'll—" Donghyuck tries not to choke on his own words— "I'll tell Donghyuck you said so."

As Donghyuck gets on the bus, he comes to the slightly horrifying realization that he'd never realized he'd been talking about Mark so much. He doesn't know exactly what to do with this information, so he settles for ignoring it as he puts his headphones in and drowns out his own thoughts with a playlist Mark curated for him over break.

⇄

Seeing his own body in person again is weirdly nice, Donghyuck decides as he walks out of the terminal to where he sees Mark pulled up by the sidewalk in Donghyuck's car, leaning against the hood and clearly absorbed in his phone.

"Yo, Donghyuck!" Donghyuck shouts, and Mark's head shoots up, surprised expression falling into an easy grin.

"Welcome back, Mark," he replies, shoving his phone into his pocket.

Donghyuck goes in for the hug before he can stop himself, dropping his duffel bag on the ground so he can wrap his arms around Mark's waist. Mark shakes with laughter, but doesn't pull away, instead letting Donghyuck cling on for as long as he wants to.

As he lets go, his fingers brush past Mark's arms and he stops still.

"Holy shit, have you been working out or something?" Donghyuck pushes up the sleeve of Mark's t-shirt to reveal slightly more defined biceps than he's sure he had when he left. Also how Mark is only wearing a t-shirt when it's this cold out is absolutely beyond him.

Mark turns unnaturally red, averting his gaze. Donghyuck forgot how much he missed seeing that. "You were the one that told me to hang around Yangyang!"

"I didn't mean to go live at the gym like he does!" Donghyuck exclaims, pressing a palm over Mark's—his own? Thinking about the details makes his brain hurt—firm stomach and tries not to pass out right there on the sidewalk.

Mark's face falls, and he curls into himself a little bit, pulling away from Donghyuck's touch. "Oh, I'm sorry," he says softly. "It's your body, after all, I shouldn't have—"

"What?" Donghyuck shrieks. "Merlin, don't _apologize_ or anything, I'm not exactly complaining about this development... I'm just more sorry that you had to put up with Yangyang like that."

"Dejun proved to be an adequate buffer," Mark replies with a shrug, pulling back from Donghyuck a little but looking a lot less uncomfortable.

 _"Dejun was there?"_ Donghyuck cries, dramatically flailing his arms. "Damn, I wish I'd actually gone home this year so—" He's cut off by Mark cupping his jaw tenderly, mouth still hanging half open with the next word caught on the tip of his tongue. Mark leans in closer, tilting Donghyuck's head just slightly to-and-fro.

"What did you do to my face?" he asks.

Donghyuck blinks. "What?"

"I mean like—" Mark gestures vaguely with his free hand— "Where's my acne?"

"Hey, I told you that skincare would pay off, you just didn't believe me." Donghyuck grins. "Speaking of, did you follow the routine I set for you? Did you use—"

"I used the ones in the red bag every morning and the ones in the blue every night," Mark recites diligently, rolling his eyes. "I don't get enough credit for the shit you make me do, man."

Donghyuck is suddenly reminded of all those bright no-longer-sticky notes on the corner of Mark's desk where he'd left them, and clenches his fists once briefly before choosing his next words.

"I'll make sure to shower you with more compliments in the future whenever you remember to put on toner, and besides—" Donghyuck bumps Mark's hip with his own— "I did the hard part here. All you have to do once we're back is keep up what I started. You're hot, Markie! It's high time you showed it off."

Donghyuck does a terrible job of speaking around the knot that forms in his throat, especially with those last few words, but it's worth it when Mark smiles back at him bashfully, delightfully pink across the bridge of his nose.

"Thanks, Hyuck," he offers, soft and demure and everything words coming from Donghyuck's mouth shouldn't be, but maybe that's why Donghyuck's heart jumps when he hears them.

"Mhmm," he hums, clapping Mark on the shoulder. "I'm starving, though. Let's go eat, yeah?"

Mark smiles at him, affectionate. "Yeah, okay."

Donghyuck grins, snatching the keys from where they're hanging loosely between Mark's fingers. "And I don't care if you're the one in my body, it's technically _my_ car, so I'll be driving."

Mark just laughs and stoops down to grab Donghyuck's discarded duffel bag and bring it to the trunk. Donghyuck skips around to the driver's seat and blows Mark a kiss, which he pretends to swat away, still laughing.

Donghyuck truly doesn't know if he's ever felt this warm before.

⇄

"So," Jungwoo starts. Donghyuck hums in acknowledgement that he's listening but continues to pack his things up. "You and Mark dating yet?"

Donghyuck nearly falls over. _"What?"_

Jungwoo stops short, eyes going wide. "Nevermind. Forget I asked."

"Wait, Jungwoo, what the fuck—"

"See you on Thursday!"

And with that, Donghyuck is left alone in the training room to sweep up the ashes that resulted from the day's practice.

⇄

"Taeyong said something weird to me today," Mark comments through a mouthful of lo mein.

"Yeah?" Donghyuck steals a piece of meat from Mark's bowl with his chopsticks, gesturing for him to elaborate.

"He asked me if we were dating?"

Donghyuck snorts. "Taeyong's basically _married_ to Jungwoo at this point, I don't know why he'd say—"

"No, like if _we_ were dating." Mark clears his throat awkwardly. "Like, you and me."

Donghyuck nearly falls out of his seat, choking on his noodles. The conversation is quickly forgotten in place of trying to clear his airways again.

⇄

Donghyuck is just cleaning up his things from Professor Qian's lecture when it happens, and at first he doesn't care about any of the whispers around him. Things like this aren't exactly _uncommon_ around campuses like this.

"Did you see what happened—"

"In the quad—"

"Massive fight—"

"Huge trouble—"

"... Heard they both got suspended—"

"Who won?"

"Who do you think?"

"Donghyuck kicked his ass—"

Donghyuck's head shoots up, looking at his desk partner. "What?"

Jeno looks back at him. "Oh, isn't he your roommate?"

"What happened?" he asks again, getting increasingly panicked.

"Oh, one of the asshole jocks decided to provoke Donghyuck. Talking shit and such, but then they apparently just attacked Huang Renjun out of nowhere, and Donghyuck retaliated." Jeno grins. "Word is that half the green commons went up in flames, but Renjun's been avenged."

Donghyuck's heart drops out of his ass.

"I gotta go, can you—"

"Yeah, I got it," Jeno assures with a smile. "Go check up on them for us."

"You're the best!" Donghyuck calls over his shoulder as he nearly sprints out of the lecture hall, one hand already dialing Mark's number, but it goes straight to voicemail.

_"Hey, you've reached Mark Lee! Sorry, I can't pick up right now, but you can leave me a message after—"_

"Shit!" Donghyuck pants, locking his phone. All he can think of is Mark not being okay, the image of Mark with all of those bandages on again, just Mark, Mark, Mark.

Which, to be honest, is all he's thinking about most of the time anyway, but that's something to unpack later.

Donghyuck doesn't have to pass the quad on his way back to the apartment, which he considers a mixed blessing as he bursts through the apartment door to find Mark leaning over his potions cookbook while struggling to put a bandage on his hand. He looks up when he hears Donghyuck slam the door open, eyes wide and panicked.

"You're not supposed to be home yet!" Mark greets. "Go to your next class, I swear—"

"Mark." Donghyuck can't manage to say anything else between his breathlessness and his otherwise utter loss for words. Mark hastily finishes wrapping the bandage around the palm of his hand, but he looks surprisingly fine otherwise.

"I'm sorry! I didn't really mean to!" he defends. "I was gonna heal myself as soon as I got back because you weren't supposed to be here and you were never supposed to _know,_ and I'm sorry I keep hurting your body it won't happen again I swear."

Donghyuck can do nothing but stand stock-still in the center of the doorway, just staring at Mark until Mark fidgets, uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry?" he tries again, voice so small Donghyuck barely hears it over the ringing in his ears.

Mark is _here,_ Mark is _safe,_ Mark isn't _hurt._ At least, not really.

And there's nothing that Donghyuck can do except for rush forward and pull Mark into a hug. "You fucking idiot," he breathes, burying his nose in the crook of Mark's neck, arms around his middle. He feels Mark hesitantly hug him back, arms looping carefully around his shoulders. "What happened?"

"They, uh..." Mark squirms a bit. "They were talking shit about you. About your family. And Renjun was there too so they started harassing him as well and I _tried_ to walk away, I really did, but then they hurt Renjun and I just... I couldn't just stand there and do nothing."

"So you incinerated the quad?" Donghyuck murmurs, unsolicited laughter threatening to bubble up in his throat.

"I didn't actually hurt them!" Mark protests into Donghyuck's hair. "It was just meant to scare them. The only person that got hurt... well, after Renjun, I suppose, was me. And I'm fine, see? I was just about to make a speed healing—"

"You can't take fights on my behalf, Mark," Donghyuck interrupts. "You can't fight my battles for me."

"I _am_ you!" Mark points out. "I did what I thought was right!"

"You don't have to stand up for me just because you're in my body. And Renjun could've taken care of himself, trust me—"

"Donghyuck, I did it because I _wanted_ to, not out of obligation," Mark croaks. "I want to stand up for you, regardless of what body I'm inhabiting."

"Mark, what—"

"Do you have any idea how people _see_ you? Merlin, it's awful!" Mark carries on, backing up so he can smush Donghyuck's cheeks between his palms. "They see you as this self-absorbed asshole who's just riding off of family connections and the sheer talent that the level of your natural magic potency has gotten you. They don't see you as the incredible son, brother, and friend like I have. They don't know how hard you've worked for what you have and yet you say nothing because you constantly take the high road instead of starting a fight. You just work harder to prove them wrong, and you're so _kind_ Donghyuck. They just..." Mark slumps, letting his hands fall to Donghyuck's shoulders. "They don't see you like I do."

Donghyuck is silent for a long moment, searching Mark's eyes.

"Say something, please," Mark says weakly.

"Look," he starts. "If you really liked me that much you could've just said so when I first kissed you." Donghyuck's joking when he says it, brain resorting to humor instead of kicking in with a real response.

Mark ducks his head, but it doesn't hide the way the tips of his ears glow scarlet. "Yeah, I meant to, but you walked away so fast I couldn't."

"Wait _what?"_ Donghyuck says.

Mark's head jerks up. "What?"

"You were serious?"

"You _weren't?"_ Mark gasps, hands flying to his face. "Holy shit, I'm so sorry, you can forget—"

"I don't want to forget a damn word of that Mark Lee," Donghyuck declares, putting a hand on his hip. "I just wish you'd done that whole spiel in your own body because mine doesn't blush as prettily as yours."

Mark chokes, "Donghyuck, what—"

"You know, if I'd taken a video of that, it would've just sounded like I was being super narcissistic and talking to myself in the mirror or something."

"Oh, shut up," Mark groans, burying his head in Donghyuck's neck. "Please."

Donghyuck presses a kiss to the side of his head. "Absolutely not."

⇄

"You wanna go first?" Donghyuck asks, reaching out to hold Mark's hand.

Mark shakes his head. "Not particularly, if I'm being honest."

Donghyuck brings Mark's knuckles up to his lips, leaving a tender kiss there. "That's okay. I'll give you a pass because you're so damn cute."

Mark glares at him. "You're literally just looking at yourself right now."

Donghyuck grins. "I'm cute too, let me live."

"You know," Mark muses. "We'd stop having this issue if we switched back by... oh, I don't know, _telling each other our Irrefutable Truths already?"_

"Sheesh, I'm getting there," Donghyuck huffs, turning his head away to avoid Mark's pointed stare. "Look, I've always admired you a lot. Your absolute dedication to work and unwavering patience and kindness is incredible, and I've been jealous of that for a long time, but I've been scared to admit it because I always thought you would just think I was making fun of you and you'd end up hating me. That's why I never asked for any help."

They both pause.

"It doesn't feel any different," Donghyuck comments. Mark shrugs.

"Maybe it doesn't make a difference until I say mine?"

"Be my guest."

"Okay, wow, uh... the truth is that I've been jealous of you for a long time. You're nearly unmatched in raw strength from the amount of magic you were born with, and I was always on the lower side of that spectrum. I always felt like I had to work twice as hard as you to do anything on the same level, and it hurt a lot to struggle so much with elemental magic when you always made it seem so easy."

Again, nothing changes. Mark frowns.

"I don't think it worked," Donghyuck murmurs, squeezing Mark's hand, shifting his position on the bed so he's sitting more comfortably.

Mark smiles weakly. "I guess it's a good thing I've gotten so good at being in your body then, because who knows how long we'll be stuck?"

Donghyuck rolls his eyes. "You are so fucking lucky that I love you **—"**

A spark of magic down Donghyuck's spine, spreading to his fingertips, making him buzz with undeniable amounts of energy. It feels like his soul has been cut loose from the confines of his chest and is bouncing around, looking for an escape. He looks up at Mark with wide eyes and a dropped jaw, reflecting Mark's own expression.

"Ah," Mark says, a little distant. "The Truth comes when the seeker stops looking."

Donghyuck grins. "I hate saying Taeyong was right, but Taeyong was right."

"I love you too," Mark tries, and jolts with the same feeling Donghyuck just had. "Bridge?"

"Bridge," Donghyuck confirms, looping a hand around the nape of Mark's neck, yanking him into a searing kiss before Mark gets the chance to delay it further by speaking more.

It's distinctly weird to kiss himself, Donghyuck recalls rather quickly, but in essence it's Mark, so he'll put up with it just once more. Mark pulls back, eyes hazy.

"Hyuck, I **—"**

He promptly passes out. He should really stop doing that.

Donghyuck barely has time to register Mark's body slumping over in his arms before Donghyuck's entire world goes dark, too.

⇄

"Kissing you is so much nicer when you're in your own body," Donghyuck mumbles against Mark's lips.

"Stop bringing that up, please." Mark grimaces, pulling back. "Top ten weirdest experiences of my life."

"Not even top five?" Donghyuck pinches his bare hip. "Damn."

"Well one of them is switching bodies, and the other eight are iterations of falling in love with my roommate of three years and not actually noticing until the body switching happened," Mark says rather sagely.

"Who needs to switch bodies anyway, when I can just be inside of you—"

"Shut the fuck up," Mark commands, and this time Donghyuck actually obeys, swooping down to kiss his boyfriend once more, letting their bodies tangle further into the sheets.

⇄

"Do you think they'll ever figure out that you lied about the bridge being necessary?" Jungwoo asks, nudging Taeyong as they watch Mark and Donghyuck sit under the newly un-scorched oak tree in the quad—all Mark's doing, of course, though perhaps with a bit of overseeing from Taeyong.

"Nah," Taeyong says, resting his head on Jungwoo's shoulder, arm looped comfortably around his waist. "And if they do some day, are they really gonna complain?"

Jungwoo just laughs, and turns them away to leave the young couple in peace.

**Author's Note:**

> [also we're going to ignore all of the small plot holes i glossed over with the whole body switching thing bc there are many technicalities i just decided to Not delve into here...]  
> go check out all of the other misfics in the collection!!! they're all incredible and i have some new favorites from the group :)
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/baridalive)  
> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/baridalive)  
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